Title says it all - for those of you who are considering the use of a CPLD or FPGA (programmable logic) in your electronics ventures, I've documented my 1st steps into this area:
http://bitcycle.org/electronics/1st_CPLD_project/
Obviously I'm hardly qualified to write a 'tuturial' of sorts since a lot of this stuff is still new to me, but it should give a nice overview of the things I ran into, and things I've tried that did or didn't work (always good to know). Or give you an idea what you'd need / what you'd be getting yourself into. And: I'm running Ubuntu here, including the CPLD development tools. I have yet to check those out, but running those tools (under Linux) definately works. :)
Very MSX-relevant I think, I shouldn't have to tell you that 1chipMSX, Erikie's SD interface, etc. are based on similar tech from Altera. Also I've seen some Lattice CPLD's here & there, on several of Leonardo Padial's creations I believe...
If you have any questions: please read the available docs first - there's a lot of stuff out there, I've put in some useful links, and I'm no expert here. But I'll be happy to add anything that isn't answered if you read carefully. If OTOH you are familiar with this stuff & spot an error somewhere: I welcome your feedback (either here or through e-mail).
P.S. Cross-posting this on World of Spectrum forum... :murdock: (maybe there'll be interesting comments there)


some working, some not, keyboard in bad shape on all of them). And I'd like to try some ZX81-style video generation (b&w composite video, no dedicated videochip of any kind) with the CPLD. Something like CPLD + image stored in EPROM -> TV screen. If I'm gonna do any MSX projects, then probably some custom mods / addons for personal use.